The Burned-Over District is a term used by some to describe the region of Western New York in the historical period of 1800-1850. It is also sometimes called the Second Great Awakening with a combination of religious, social and political elements.

Mr. Sailer's series was designed "to point out that the color line discrimination against blacks was both quantitatively and qualitatively more severe than the discrimination suffered by other groups" and that "we shouldn't project how African-Americans were treated to other minorities."

Indeed. We make a big hoopla now over this or that "Hispanic" politico, but to our ancestors before Nixon (who gave us the term "Hispanic"), this was no big deal. Neither were marriages to Polynesians, whom I remember being classified as "white" in one of the books I read as a kid.

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Both of my wife's parents were college students in the American South in the 1950's, in Oklahoma, which was a segregated state. My wife's father is a Chamorro (indigenous of Guam), her mother is Chinese-Filipina. Neither of them report ever being subject to any segregation while in Oklahoma. No being forced to sit in the back of the bus. No not getting served in restaurants. No forced use of "colored" drinking fountains or bathrooms. As my father-in-law once explained to me, his experience with segregation was as follows: if you weren't black, you were white.

I have my doubts that Romualdo Pacheco would have been pleased to have his name associated with diversity.

Some families mixed with the Indians, others such as mine did not. Pacheco looks like he came from one of the families that did not.

Having grown up in a Spanish family that never until my father's generation married beyond cousins so as to keep the blood pure, there was always a very strong distinction made between the Indians and who we are.